DEAR News Of The Area,
AFTER more than a decade of campaigning, NSW Parliament finally passed the law creating the Great Koala National Park.
Within days, Gurmesh Singh MP claimed the park was a cynical carbon scheme, bad for koalas, jobs, housing and bushfire safety. Our community deserves better.
He says the park exists to raise money for Sydney.
Rubbish.
The community campaigned long before forest carbon credits were proposed, and the park will protect habitat for around 12,000 koalas, 36,000 greater gliders and over 100 threatened species.
The Park will generate carbon credits, something the Greens oppose because forests should be protected and funded as public assets. However, we obtained the guarantee any income generated from credits would be spent only on the Park in the local area, not Sydney.
Gurmesh claims credits are issued for saving 10,000 trees when only four would have been logged. Wrong again. The method calculates the carbon difference between continued logging and forest protection, accounting for timber and regrowth.
His koala science is worse.
A small study found no significant change in male koala density after logging, not that logging helps koalas. Declines at national park comparison sites were linked to drought and canopy dieback.
Higher koala estimates from CSIRO reflect better detection and more surveys, not a population boom.
NSW’s latest estimate is 274,000 koalas, but they remain endangered, with populations already gone from parts of NSW.
Without urgent protection of habitat, koalas will become extinct in the wild before 2050. Counting them more accurately hasn’t removed the threats behind that warning.
Gurmesh claims thousands of jobs are threatened and 40 per cent of NSW hardwood will disappear.
The Government estimates up to 300 jobs affected, requiring support and retraining, with around 100 new national parks jobs planned.
The 40 per cent figure concerns native hardwood logging in northern NSW, not statewide supply. This won’t stop houses being built or bring down the wider timber industry.
Housing construction relies on plantation softwood and manufactured timber products. Sufficient structural timber for Australian homes is available until at least 2050.
The real opportunity for timber jobs and growth is in plantations, processing and Australian-made engineered wood products.
Gurmesh claims Europeans didn’t see a koala until 1798 so tourism is a dead end.
More than 200 Mid North Coast businesses backed the park for healthy forests and nature-based tourism as valuable regional assets.
His bushfire warning ignores that the National Parks and Wildlife Service is a firefighting authority with trained crews, machinery and fire management responsibilities.
Most importantly he completely ignores the evidence that logging increases the risk of more frequent and intense wildfire.
On simple economics, logging our public native forests costs taxpayers millions in losses every year. Now they will generate millions in revenue for the local community to protect and regenerate them.
Our community worked for this park for years. We deserve a serious conversation about managing it and protecting the forests still facing logging without wading through misinformation from a local MP.
Regards,
Sue Higginson
Greens MP.
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